The Reward Of Pain And Pleasure (BDSM Series Pt. 5)
This video is the fifth in a six-part series on BDSM. Dr. Joy explores why some people enjoy the lines between pain and pleasure. For more information on love and health, or to read a full transcript of this video, visit http://www.loveandhealth.info
Step 1: Meet Joy Davidson:
Welcome to The Joy Spot. I am Doctor Joy Davidson. I am a love and health advisory board member, a psychologist, and an asex certified sex therapist, based in New York City. And my website is joydavidson.com. You are watching one in a series of six videos on the topic of erotic power play, more commonly known as bdsm. For a lot of people who are either intrigued or turned off by the idea of bdsm, all they really know is what they see in the movies, music videos, and maybe in porn. But depictions on film are often over glamorized or surreal directors visions. Sometimes they are even hard to distinguish from a super model convention or a psychopath’s wet dream.
Step 2: Indulge yourself:
In contrast, bdsm in real life is as individual for the practitioners as the mix of books on the shelves at their home. From wardrobe to choices of instruments of pleasure, anyone can create their own signature approach. If you can afford to indulge in Victorian corsets, six-inch platform heels, or rubber suits, you can. If you want to collect black leather bondage gear, or play with stainless steel dildos, and vibrating butt plugs the size of a pinky or a fist you can do that too. It is all available for a price. But you can also rely on plain old wooden clothespin and backyard laundry rope, or paraffin candles and wooden spoons. You can be high fem or ultra butch regardless of your sex or degree of straight, bi, gay, or otherwise. The sky is really the limits. But the real feast is in the fact that bdsm is a playground where your soul can expand. It is a realm where erotiscm thrives on revelation and creativity. That is the part you really do not see in the movies.
Step 3: The reality:
The other part you do not see in the movies is the part where people fumble and get it all wrong and screw up trying to figure out how to tie up their partner and then see it all unravel anyway. Alternatively, the care taken in learning to swat a partner and hit the parts you are aiming for. In the movies, they do not tell you to practice on pillows first or instruct you how to avoid the danger zones like the spine or the kidneys. They do not show you how to find the sweet spots on the butt either, which is low and inside closer to the thighs where the cheeks meet.
Step 4: Educate yourself:
In the movies, they do not show you each implement requires learning an entirely different technique. A cane is not the same as a riding crop. Dripping a melting candle made of wax on a delicate body part is by no means the same as dripping a paraffin candle and holding it close to the body is not the same as holding it far away. Holding close is much riskier and hotter. The movies don’t show you how to add to your partners pleasure by keeping them sexually turned on by intermittently stroking their hot spots and using implements of pain at the same time. Or kissing them and whispering sweet syrupy words as they struggle.
Step 5: Take it seriously:
Despite the prevalence of the cruel dominatrix in films, they do not even imply that the harsh and smug vixen can be a real turn off. Seduction not scathing or scolding is the rule of the day. Learning what to do once you have a partner ready, willing, and waiting is a whole series of lessons and creative adventures. So if you are new to bdsm you have a steep learning curve ahead of you and a lot of territory to explore. Take the education seriously, and remember that if you are the top your partner is depending on you to do your homework, and ego has no place. If you are the bottom your partner is depending on you to express what you are really feeling and to use your safe words. Better to use a safe word before you are certain you need it than to have needed it two minutes ago.
Step 6: Sadism and masochism
Among all the aspects of bdsm that one can explore, sadism and masochism, seems to provoke the most fascination and revolution. Pain giving way to pleasure, does that mean it does not really hurt or does that mean it hurts and you like it? This is especially tough to grasp for some tops who do not respond to intense sensation themselves especially when they want to excite a bottom who does. They have to have a lot of trust in their partners to believe that pain play is okay. If this is an area that confuses you one way to make more sense of it is to ask yourself, have you ever made love wildly and passionately and felt sore the next day maybe even finding puzzling bruises or bites in places you couldn’t explain because you don’t remember doing anything that hurt enough to leave marks. If so, you already know what it means perceive pain as pleasure, granted on a much smaller scale or a lighter note.
Step 7: Pleasure/pain contrast:
When heavier sensation is applied, the body responds by surging with homemade chemicals, notably dopamine and the endorphins, or body’s natural opiates. Endorphins diminish the intensity of felt pain and can produce a rush allowing ordinary consciousness to split away and hover in suspension. Almost like being in a trance or meditation. For example, one bottom, we will call her Mary likes pinchy little clips placed on her labia and she likes her boyfriend to use a soft leather whip on her inner thighs bringing searing heat to the area before he penetrates her in the missionary position. Pressing against the biting plastic clips pushing the degree of pinch almost to the edge of tolerability, at that point he starts to remove them, which causes a whole different surge of biting heat when the blood rushes back to the areas. Mary says that this helps her to feel more, feel more pleasure sexually, internally. The sensation she says is so big, so hot that she feels almost faint with it. And she can have an orgasm without any direct clitoral caress just from intercourse because the sensation ups the increased passion and intensity so much. The contrast between pleasure and pain amplifies even the slightest sensation.
Step 8: Mary is not weird:
Is Mary weird? Well not according to the latest scientific research. New brain studies have shown the pain centers and reward centers communicate. Pain evokes activation of reward areas that previously were thought responsive to only such stimuli as drugs, food and money. So maybe the b in bdsm should really stand for brain.
Step 9: Thanks for watching:
Thanks for watching this episode of The Joy Spot. I invite you to have a look at the other videos on bdsm as well as all of the other Joy Spot videos. And for more information about sex, love, and health, or to submit questions please visit us at loveandhealth.info, or find me at my own website JoyDavidson.com
